One of the mysteries of the world is in this. I was in a little grocery store in New Orleans a few years ago talking to Abby, when a voice from around the aisle corner said: “Is that Mills Baker?”

It was my sixth grade teacher, whom I hadn’t seen in more than twenty years. I expressed shock —my appearance changes a lot; I’m extremely unstable; I feel like I’m “always changing” and if you talk to me at any time, I’m always on some new kick, some new shit— and she said “oh, I just heard you talking and recognized you immediately, you haven’t changed at all!”

Twice-weekly therapy; heavy doses of intense medications in a complex cocktail; endless immersions in meaning systems of various kinds; new exercise and diet regimens; new careers, new cities, new people… and I’m instantly recognizable, by speech alone, to an elementary school teacher I had for one year.

I have changed and I have not.

Kundera talks about Tolstoy’s character Pierre Bezuhov, from War and Peace: in a (superficial) sense, he is “always changing”: from one political party to its very opposite, for example. But Pierre is constant in that: he is always freshly on a new hunt, has always recently “figured it out”; the content changes, but the form does not. I assume this is partly what’s at play with all of us: we change content —”Oh, I don’t believe X anymore, I believe Y now; I don’t do A anymore, now I just practice B”— but the “way we are” with beliefs, the form of our relationship with life and ideas, perhaps that is fixed. I have no idea.